Haaretz journalists are reporting a story (Hebrew) that a source within Fatah has informed them that Khaled Meshal has ordered Hamas’ military wing to cease terror attacks against Israel both from Gaza and the West Bank.  The supposed order came in the context of unity talks held between Mahmoud Abbas and Meshal in Egypt recently.

If the report is true, it would be a very important development.  But I’m not completely convinced.  First note that one of the two reporters is Avi Issacharoff, whose accuracy is sometimes wanting.  Second, the source is from Fatah, which is a sworn enemy of Hamas.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this was leaked by Fatah in order to force Hamas to deny it.  Such a denial would further diminish that group’s stature as an acceptable, reliable partner for future peace talks.  But this is the skeptical side of me speaking.  I’d like to be proven wrong on this one.  If it is true it could mean that Hamas is traveling farther down the road to pragmatism and realism noted in Joel Greenberg’s Washington Post story I posted about a few days ago.

The Haaretz reporters also note a statement by Meshal that Hamas is willing to join Fatah in accepting a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, though it will not recognize Israeli explicitly at this point.  The Hamas chief also noted that this decision was endorsed by the group’s Politburo including all of its senior leaders.  Add to that the announcement following the Cairo talks that Hamas intends to join the PLO, and you have further proof that Hamas is moving in a more pragmatic direction.

The story goes on to speculate that there may be elements within Hamas in Gaza who refuse to accept the directive and who will attempt to mount terror attacks in order to torpedo it.  Though this sounds more like the speculation of Israeli intelligence officials who seek to demean or diminish any change in Hamas policy.  That group generally shows enormous discipline in adhering to positions adopted by its leadership, and I doubt there could be the same kind of fragmentation and dysfunction seen within Fatah in the past.

According to the Haaretz report, Israeli intelligence sources are continuing to misplay Hamas by claiming they know nothing of any substantive change in the group’s ideological or strategic direction.  If there is any change, they claim, it is simply in its tactics and nothing deeper.  This is of a piece with both Israeli and U.S. attempts to discredit Hamas as a legitimate player in Palestinian politics.  This is precisely what they both did during the Arab Spring when popular uprisings shattered the foundations of some of the formerly most stable regimes, ones that Israel and the U.S. relied on to further their own interests in the region.  Both nations had better recalibrate their analysis or they’ll be left looking foolish and irrelevant when the Palestinians announce they’ve completed a unity agreement, presuming this does happen.

Israeli Heron drone of the type that might've been booby-trapped

NOTE: This story generated a huge amount of site traffic from Israel and coverage in Israeli media which caused high server load.  My host temporarily brought the site down and it should now be restored to service.  If you have trouble accessing it still, let me know.

UPDATE: Through a helpful reader, I discovered that a staff member working for my host did not reactivate a file on my site when it was restored, which meant the only page accessible was my home page.  That error has been corrected and the host says there now should be full access to all pages.  Let me know if you experience any further problems and I apologize for any inconvenience.

The history of military intelligence is full of nation’s whose personnel made rash, foolish and careless decisions ending in disaster.  Israel has done this.  Yesterday, news broke that the CIA allowed two Hezbollah double agents penetrate and roll up its Lebanese spy network, in part because U.S. agents met repeatedly at the same Pizza Hut, using the code word “Pizza” to arrange their rendez vous.

Now comes an exclusive report from an authoritative Israeli source with considerable military experience, that IDF military intelligence (Aman) has out foxed Hezbollah by deliberately crash-landing a booby-trapped Trojan Horse drone in southern Lebanon.

Here is how the incident was reported by an unsuspecting Wall Street Journal reporter:

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a radar operated by French United Nations peacekeepers picked up a pilotless Israeli reconnaissance drone crossing into south Lebanon. It was given no more attention than any of the dozens of other surveillance missions flown by the Israelis in Lebanese airspace each month.

But when the drone passed above Wadi Hojeir, a yawning valley with steep, brush-covered slopes, it abruptly vanished from the radar screen. The startled peacekeepers contacted the Lebanese army, and a search of the rugged valley was conducted in the early-evening gloom. Nothing was found.

No one can recall the last time that an Israeli drone malfunctioned over Lebanon and crashed, and there were no reports of antiaircraft fire. The Israelis have said nothing. Neither has Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and arch foe of Israel. The peacekeeping force is now abuzz.

And now I can tell them what happened.  For over a year, Hezbollah has been attempting to discover how to jam the ground signals commanding the drone so as to disable them in flight.  When it discovered the downed craft, its operatives must’ve crowed that they’d finally discovered the key to success.  This bit of hubris is how Aman drew Hezbollah into its net.  Its soldiers dutifully collected the imagined intelligence trophy and brought it to a large weapons depot it controlled in the area.  Once inside the arms cache, Aman detonated the drone causing a massive explosion.  Here is how the Daily Star described that event:

A huge explosion shook a Hezbollah stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre overnight, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday.  The source said the cause of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined due to the heavy security blanket by Hezbollah.

Lebanese security forces were unable to access the scene of the explosion after the resistance group set up a security perimeter around the blast site, which is located in a valley called Wadi Al-Jabal al-Kabir between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added.  Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache.

Given that Hezbollah is reputed to have many more missiles and more advanced models than it had before the 2006 Lebanon War, we can only imagine how serious this blow will be to the group’s war fighting capability.  Hezbollah is known to possess some of the most advanced Iranian rockets (the Zelzal) in anticipation of possible use should Israel attack Iran.  Given the size of the explosion, we should expect that a good deal of its weapons cache in the south has been destroyed.

Hezbollah is known for being highly professional and quite crafty in its intelligence capabilities having penetrated the IDF intelligence network in the 2006 war.  That’s why I find it almost inexplicable that its fighters wouldn’t have at least considered the craft might be a Trojan Horse.  It’s possible that Hezbollah did consider the idea and searched for an explosive charge & didn’t find one.  In that case, the IDF must’ve very cleverly concealed it.

At any rate, as soldiers, even brilliant ones, often do, Hezbollah made a fatal error which the IDF exploited.  And before Israel’s supporters jump for joy at another Israeli victory in the unending war on terror, remember that in 1999, a Hezbollah cell phone was brought to the vaunted IDF Unit 8200 headquarters for examination.  The soldiers preparing to view it joked “If it explodes, we’ll know.”  It did indeed explode seriously wounding the two senior Israeli intelligence officers.  Not to mention the major amount of egg it splattered on the face of Israel’s renowned intelligence agency.

The moral being, in this dirty game called asymmetrical warfare, you and your enemy circle each other warily seeking to exploit any weakness.  And you will make mistakes because you are only human.  The fatal assumption is that your opponent is the only dumb one who will make them, and you never will.

An additional embarrassment for Hezbollah is that the destroyed arms cache is located south of the Litani River in a zone which is forbidden to contain any armaments.  This means that the group has committed a major violation of the UN ceasefire resolution 1701.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that though many Israelis and the pro-Israel right are crowing about this “victory” against terror, that saborage and black ops aren’t even successful tactics, let alone strategy in dealing with Israel’s issues with Syria or Lebanon.  So what if Israel blew up 100 rockets?  Hezbollah will only replace them.  And then some.  It already has many thousands more missiles than it had before the 2006 war.  And it certainly has many arms caches hidden in southern Lebanon.

So if you’re cheering for this IDF ‘victory’ it’s pyrrhic at best.  As I’ve said about Israel’s covert actions and the U.S. sanctions program against Iran, they aren’t a strategy.  They’re a substitute for a policy.  Israel has no policy for resolving the conflict with Syria and Lebanon, so it uses a placeholder one of striking out whenever it can to degrade its opponent.  But these acts of terror or sabotage don’t degrade anything in the long or even medium-term.  Hezbollah just regroups and comes out stronger than before.

There is only one real strategy, that is the one advocated by Turkey when it hosted talks aimed at resolving the conflict between Syria and Israel.  I remind you it was Ehud Olmert who torpedoed those talks at a time when Bashar al-Assad was willing to make peace in return for the Golan.  Until an Israeli leader is willing to do this, no amount of Israeli Trojan Horse drones or missile base sabotage will change the fundamental fact that Israel has no policy and no strategy for getting out of the mess it’s in.

Related articles

• Hezbollah Holds Lebanese CIA Informants, Officials Say – New York Times (nytimes.com)

Mark Perry has a mini-blockbuster of a story in Foreign Policy revealing that a team of CENTCOM intelligence analysts offered a report about what U.S. military policy should be toward Hezbollah and Hamas.  The results are exceedingly pragmatic, sensible, and for that reason, controversial:

…Senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams.

…The…report calls for the integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian security forces…The Red Team’s conclusion…is perhaps its most controversial finding: “The U.S. role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities — the government of Lebanon and Fatah — that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively” (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to note that while Hizballah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.”

Can U.S. policy ever come to terms with Hamas? (Wikipedia)

This is going to have the Israel lobby mavens screaming bloody murder and the Republicans crying: “You see, we told you Obama couldn’t be trusted on Israel.”  Probably in a day or two Admiral Mullen and Gen. Petraeus will be trying to get the horses back in the barn.

I think what will anger these folks is that the Red Team is only speaking common sense to anyone who knows anything about the politics of Lebanon and Palestine.  Of course, Hezbollah and Hamas, though many of their views and policies may be anathema to some living in western democracies, represent legitimate political opinion within their respective societies.  And we’ve got to stop viewing such phenomena through our own particular U.S. lens and try to understand things more in the context of the Middle East.

Here is more reason bound to give Israel apoplexy:

…The CENTCOM team directly repudiates Israel’s publicly stated view — that the two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force. The report says that “failing to recognize their separate grievances and objectives will result in continued failure in moderating their behavior.”

I can just see Mort Klein, Malcolm Hoenlein and Bibi foaming at the mouth and dripping with sarcasm: “Instead of fighting murderous Middle Eastern terrorists you hopeless western liberals try to “understand” them and negotiate with them.”

We should be realistic in noting that no radical shift in U.S. policy is in the offing.  But the fact that senior intelligence officers at the military HQ responsible for the Middle East region is contemplating the formerly unthinkable and has leaked such a report is significant:

“There is a lot of thinking going on in the military and particularly among intelligence officers in Tampa [the site of CENTCOM headquarters] about these groups,” acknowledged a senior CENTCOM officer familiar with the report. However, he denied that senior military leaders are actively lobbying Barack Obama’s administration to forge an opening to the two organizations. “That’s probably not in the cards just yet,” he said.

It’s that “just yet” that will have Bibi and Ehud and Gaby crapping in their shorts.

The report directly contradicted the claims of the Israeli military and intelligence regarding the nature of Hezbollah:

The Red Team downplays the argument that the Lebanese Shiite group [Hezbollah]  acts as a proxy for Iran. The report includes a quote from Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, stating that if Lebanon and Iran’s interests ever conflicted, his organization would favor Lebanese interests. “Hizballah’s activities increasingly reflect the movement’s needs and aspirations in Lebanon, as opposed to the interests of its Iranian backers,” the report concludes. It also criticizes Israel’s August 2006 war against Hizballah as counterproductive. “Instead of exploiting Hizballah’s independent streak … Israeli actions in Lebanon may have had the reverse effect of tightening its bonds with Iran,” the authors note.

Regarding Hamas, the Red Team notes the clearest possible reasons why Israel might want to maintain the Islamist group as its national bogeyman:

…The senior intelligence experts…ignal their unease with Israel’s anti-Hamas policies, particularly the continuing Israeli siege of Gaza…[They] note that Israel’s strategy of keeping Gaza under siege also keeps “the area on the verge of a perpetual humanitarian collapse” — a policy that the intelligence report says “may be radicalizing more people, especially the young, increasing the number of potential recruits” for the organization. The report argues that an Israeli decision to lift the siege might pave the way for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, which would be “the best hope for mainstreaming Hamas.” The Red Team also claims that reconciliation with Fatah, when coupled with Hamas’s explicit renunciation of violence, would gain “widespread international support and deprive the Israelis of any legitimate justification to continue settlement building and delay statehood negotiations.”

This passage lays out in bright lines why Israel desperately does NOT want Palestinian reconciliation and does not want to end the siege or see Hamas moderate its positions.  It could mean the death of the settlement movement, the death of Greater Israel, and the death of the Occupation–all of which are phenomena many Israelis refuse to live without.  Not just that they believe they cannot live without them, but that if they must renounce them it would endanger the State’s existence.

There are those among Israel’s right-wing supporters who claim that Hamas is irredentist and irredeemable.  That simply isn’t true.  As a NY Times column today by two U.S. Mideast counter-terrorism experts points out:

…When we talked to Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas…he said that his movement could imagine a two-state “peace” (he used the term “salaam,” not just the usual “hudna”…

After reading the following passage I think I’ve discovered a few new heroes.  And who’d-a-thunk I could ever view a military intelligence officer as a hero?  But there you have it:

…The CENTCOM Red Team report has been read by outgoing CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus…There’s little question the report reflects the thinking among a significant number of senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters — and among senior CENTCOM intelligence officers and analysts serving in the Middle East….A CENTCOM senior officer told me that — so far as he knows — there is, in fact, no parallel “Blue Team” report contradicting the Red Team’s conclusion. “Well, that’s not exactly right,” this senior officer added. “The Blue Team is the Obama administration.”

When it comes to the IDF I would advise a wise Israeli political leader (perhaps an extinct species) to run as far as he or she could from what the army or military intelligence advises as far as policy is concerned.  When it comes to the U.S. military I’m shocked to say I believe just the opposite.  It is the political leaders who are lost in the dark and those in CENTCOM who have the freshest and most innovative approach for resolving the conflict.

The Red Team report is also especially important in light of the groundbreaking testimony of Gen. Petraeus before Congress that the lack of resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict drives the Muslim world away from us, foments hatred, fuels militancy, and ends up costing the lives of U.S. troops.  That’s the truth, a truth that few policymakers at the highest levels are willing to digest (yet).  Or if they are digesting it, they’re still not willing to act on the realization.  When Pres. Obama gets tough on Israel, demands an end to the Gaza siege, demands Israel accept a return to 1967 borders, that’s when the lesson will have sunk in–and not before.

Haaretz runs two stories reporting on the shape of a potential ceasefire proposal, but with markedly different tone and emphases.

Ami Issacharoff and Natasha Mozgovaya write that Egypt is brokering a ceasefire with Hamas and that the group has accepted the terms in principle with some reservations:

Hamas representatives held a press conference in Cairo Monday evening following talks with Egyptian officials, and announced that they have accepted in principle…a cease-fire agreement to end the fighting…saying that they hoped that the Egyptian efforts will bring about an end to the aggression against the Palestinians.

…Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmet Aboul Gheit said…that Hamas had accepted the Egyptian draft which calls for immediate end to aggression on Gaza, the opening of the border crossings and the withdrawal of Israeli forces inside the Strip…

Earlier Wednesday, the Saudi-owned Arabic language Al Arabiya TV reported that…Hamas had agreed to abide by the 2005 agreement which calls for Palestinian Authority forces to man the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt under the supervision of European observers.

Hamas conditioned the cease-fire agreement with Israel on the immediate withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip, Al Arabiya reported.

Which all seems well and good if these are the actual terms.  Israel gets an end to rocket attacks and Hamas gets open border crossings.  But when you read Amos Harel’s account, all is not as it appears to be:

After 19 days of fighting and more than 1,000 Palestinian fatalities, the first significant signs that Hamas is breaking could be seen Wednesday night. Hamas representatives to talks with Egypt announced an agreement in principle on Wednesday to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal…

But the way things looked on Wednesday, Hamas seems to be willing to accept the Egyptian initiative, which is almost a kind of surrender agreement for it.

The Egyptian proposal is mostly bad for Hamas. It doesn’t let the organization bring the Palestinian public any political achievement that would justify the blood that has been spilled, and even forces on it the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in the form of its renewed presence at the Rafah crossing (as a condition for its reopening).

Once the cease-fire is reached, the IDF will withdraw from the positions it captured in Gaza, and only then will the two sides begin to discuss the opening of border crossings and removal of the blockade, which was the reason Hamas gave for waging war. The most that Cairo is offering is a timetable for the opening of the crossing points, and even that depends on negotiations due to begin after the cease-fire is reached, and it’s tough to know how or when they will end.

Clearly, Harel’s report is much closer to the line the Israeli cabinet and IDF want Israelis and the world to hear: Hamas is defeated; acceptance of the ceasefire signals capitulation; Israel has given them virtually nothing and gets virtually everything it seeks in return.  If Harel is correct, then this a red flag.  It is not enough for Hamas that the IDF withdraws from Gaza.  If Israel doesn’t actually lift the ceasefire or at least give Gaza and Hamas some respite from the terrible 18 month siege, then it gives the Palestinians no reason to abide by the ceasefire.

Further, the idea that Israel can impose on Gaza the reintroduction of Fatah seems far-fetched given the history of the past year:

Israel is proposing, with the tacit agreement of Egypt and the United States, to place the Palestinian Authority at the heart of an ambitious program to rebuild Gaza, administering reconstruction aid and securing Gaza’s borders. But that plan is already drawing skepticism. Mr. Khatib, for example, called the idea of any Palestinian Authority role in postwar Gaza “silly” and “naïve.”

It is far more likely if Fatah gains control of reconstruction funding for Gaza that it will embezzle the funds rather than use them for the purpose intended.  Ironically, it is only Hamas that would actually use the funds properly and actually reconstruct the territory.  The reconstruction plan is yet another false gesture by some Israeli official working in a Tel Aviv government office who has not concept of what actually might work on the ground in Palestine.  Need I mention the following words to give you a sense of how misguided all this is: Iraqi reconstruction.

Unlike Israel’s apologists who are interested in Israel vanquishing Hamas, I’m interested in a durable ceasefire that brings real peace to the two sides.  To get that, Israel cannot be seen to be the victor.  It cannot be seen to get all it wants and give nothing it doesn’t want to give.

That’s why the Arab world is so deeply split on the virtues of Egyptian and Saudi mediation of this crisis.  Nations like Qatar and others in the Arab League believe that the mediators are not representing Palestinian interests.  Further, they believe that the ruling elite of these two nations have done everything they can to silence voices of support for Hamas within their respective countries.  These elites have, out of mistrust of Hamas, been all too willing to sell its interests for a mess of porridge.

This is what worries me about the prospective agreement.  Though I do not support Hamas or its principles, the fact is that it is a political representative of the Palestinians.  There can never be real peace unless Hamas and the people of Gaza buy into the agreement.  If Israeli policymakers werer smart (and unfortunately they aren’t), they would understand that it is their own interest to get such buy-in.  Without it, rockets or some other form of violent resistance will resume in a matter of weeks or months and then we will be right back where we started.  With the only difference being that the frustration and rage on both sides will have been ratcheted up considerably leading to even greater bloodshed and savagery in the future.

Harel also notes a more practical and cynical reason for Israel to agree to a ceasefire now:

Several said it would be best to end the operation now, when Israeli deterrence has improved – and before U.S. President George W. Bush makes way for his successor, Barack Obama, on January 20.

Anyone who understands how Israel works will know that this is indeed a critical consideration for Israel since it is essentially a U.S. satellite (though with a mind of its own).  Indeed, I believe the timing of the initiation of hostilities by Israel was deliberately chosen to allow a decent interval in which it could attack Hamas before the transition to a new, and possibly less favorable administration in Washington.

Harel closes his report with this typically vacuously hopeful spin:

if nothing goes wrong with the plans in the next few days, Israel has a decent chance of ending this conflict while maintaining the upper hand…

Again, this is the problem with Israeli policy.  It is obsessed with tactical advantage, who’s up and whose down.  Instead, it should be worrying about securing the consent of its adversary.  This is not the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII.  Hamas will never capitulate and Israel cannot drop an atom bomb to vanquish the foe.  Though Hamas is not Israel’s equal, if the latter looks at this as a conventional conflict with winners and losers, then Israel will be the one that loses in the long run EVEN IF it currently “maintains the upper hand.”

Almost 24 hours after Israel and the Palestinians agreed to a Gaza ceasefire, it appears to be largely holding. All Israeli forces have withdrawn from Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas has deployed 13,000 security officers throughout the area to deter rocket attacks. This should silence those rightists who continually claim that Palestinians leaders have never done anything to enforce calm in their areas. While Prime Minister Haniye says that all militant groups agreed to the truce, a representative of Islamic Jihad, in explaining why his groups launched rockets after the ceasefire said his group was not party to it. Haniye immediately disputed this characterization. Haaretz claims that three rockets were fired after the ceasefire by Hamas and Islamic Jihad (NY Times claims nine).

The Israeli government appears guardedly optimistic and Olmert announced that he’d ordered the IDF not to fire on Palestinian rocket crews. He also announced that his goal was to create an atmosphere that would lead to peace talks with the Palestinians. All this is excellent news. Some of it is unprecedented as I noted above.

But apparently, there are elements of both the IDF and the far-right political scene who are gnashing their teeth and already mouthing the expected imprecations. What I find strange is that Haaretz notes that IDF officers in the Southern Command have objected to an explicit civilian order coming from no less than the prime minister:

In army circles, and particularly at IDF Southern Command, there is a great deal of skepticism about the agreement. Senior officers have warned that without enforcement and an end to the smuggling of weapons through tunnels from Sinai to Rafah, the cease-fire is a dangerous development.

The officers maintain that Hamas is making enormous efforts to arm itself. They add that when the organization thinks it is ready, its members will resume the violence and then its military capabilities will pose a greater threat to IDF troops.

Senior security sources in Israel pointed out Sunday that leaders in militant groups spoke of a cease-fire only in terms of the Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, and did not commit themselves to stopping other forms of attacks in other parts of the territories.

What is ridiculous about this statement is that Israel did not offer a West Bank ceasefire as far as I know. So why would you blame the militants for not observing a West Bank truce if you weren’t observing one yourself?

I think this IDF chuffing and puffing underlies the tenuous relationship between civilian and military authority. In reality, Israeli security policy is run by the IDF with very little control exercised by civilian officials. After all, can you imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff telling the Washington Post that he objected to a policy initiative of his commander in chief? Douglas MacArthur tried that ploy with Truman and it didn’t work for him. There has rarely if ever been such a MacArthur moment in Israeli history because the IDF essentially gets its way on most matters.

The rightist political parties are performing their usual stalking horse role for the military by echoing its carping about the ceasefire:

[They] warned that the militant organizations would take advantage of this hiatus to grow stronger in advance of a renewal of violent actions against Israel.

MK Silvan Shalom (Likud) said,…”We are playing make believe. The cease-fire is imaginary. It will give the Hamas time to get reorganized.” MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) called on the government to rescind its agreement to a cease-fire, saying: “Israel is missing a golden opportunity to carry out a Defensive Shield 2 [broad ground offensive] in the Gaza Strip, and is in essence enabling the creation of a threat, Hezbollah-style, in the south of the country.”

Imagine, if you will, George Bush announcing a peace initiative for Iraq and the Democrats immediately rejecting it and saying we should carry on till the bloody end. Even if there were such pro-war Democrats remaining, I doubt even they would dare to denounce presidential policy. They might if the policy were tried for a period and it failed. But for the denunciation to come within 12 hours of its initiation seems the height of chutzpah. You know, the right always accuses the left of treason. You could make a reasonable argument that in this case it is the right that is acting in a manner injurious to the interests of the State.

Omigod! Is it really possible? Both Israel and Palestinian militants have announced a ceasefire:

A ceasefire in the Gaza Strip has come into force, with the Palestinians halting rocket attacks into Israel.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas won a commitment from all militant groups to stop the attacks, while Israeli PM Ehud Olmert agreed to halt hostilities.

Israel said all its troops withdrew from Gaza before the ceasefire took effect, five months after its military re-entered the Strip.

BBC correspondents say the agreement is unexpected and a major development…

The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Gaza says…Mr Abbas phoned his opposite number on Saturday evening to say he had agreement from all Palestinian factions that they would stop their rocket fire. There is a signed agreement between Mr Abbas, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and all the Palestinian factions, a spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister, Miri Eisin, told the BBC that Mr Olmert had agreed that Israeli forces would not initiate any offensive action after that time. But she said Mr Olmert had made it clear that it might take some time to pull all Israeli troops out of the Gaza Strip if the ceasefire held.

However, shortly after the ceasefire took effect, the Israeli army confirmed that all its troops had left. “There are no forces now in Gaza,” said a military spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency.

Ms Eisin said Mr Olmert believed this was a chance to achieve stability and one that Israel could not miss.

Can this be? Can it last? Am I dreaming? I knew this day might come. But I never wanted to invest the amount of hope it would take to believe fully in it. And now, perhaps it has. Perhaps. So many things could go wrong and have in the past. But the key is that at this moment the two warring sides seem to be on the same page. I only hope they can stay there long enough for other confidence building measures to happen.

Gilad Shalit must be freed. Palestinian prisoners must be freed. In that regard, this too is an encouraging statement from Hamas:

The deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Musa Abu Marzuk, said over the weekend that Israel had agreed to an exchange of prisoners for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Abu Marzuk, based in Damascus, also said that based on talks Hamas political head Khaled Meshal had held in Cairo, it appeared Israel had agreed to release prisoners simultaneously with the release of Shalit, which it had opposed in the past. “This is definitely encouraging,” he said.

A Palestinian unity government must come into being. It must signal a willingness to recognize Israel and renounce violence. The international boycott of Gaza must end. Ports of entry must be reopened. Settlements must be stopped. And eventually, final status negotiations must begin. Can we get there? Who knows. But this is the best news in ages. And we should savor it and build upon it.

And it is very important to build upon it. For if both sides sit back on their laurels and expect peace to happen miraculously we’ll be back to the killing fields shortly. Now is the time, if there ever was one, for Bush and Rice to get off their asses. If Jim Baker is ever going to have influence on the Bush Mideast policy, now had better be it. Olmert and Abbas should be invited to a place like Camp David for talks and Bush shouldn’t let them out till they have a final agreement. And unlike what Clinton did before the 2000 Camp David talks, we must make both sides aware of what they are likely to have to give up BEFORE they come. Negotiations will not work on a wing and a prayer or a Hail Mary pass.

Can he do it? Unlike the Bob the Builder children’s book series I’m loathe to say: “Yes, he can!” He hasn’t so far. In fact, he’s totally botched everything he’s touched in the Mideast thus far in his presidency. But maybe he can appoint Jim Baker his Israel-Palestine emissary and allow him to crack heads together.

We should also note that this truce only applies to Gaza. It is entirely possible that either side could wreck the current ceasefire by their aggressive policies in the West Bank. Let’s hope that they see reason and keep their powder dry.

The statements emanating from the Damascus based Hamas leadership are also interesting. Meshal has made an ultimatum saying there must be an independent Palestinian state in six months or he will call for a new intifada. Besides noting the self-aggrandizing delusion of the fellow to believe he can determine events with a word, I read this as saying: “I’m dubious about this ceasefire. If Abbas wants it–then he will get it. But only for a limited time. Let’s see what he can do in six months. Either he produces or we will return to the scene with a military solution.” If I am right, then I am betting that Gilad Shalit’s release (which Meshal no doubt controls) will come shortly followed or accompanied by a major Palestinian prisoner release. All this would be good. Very good. But it still would not be dayenu.

It is also excellent to read the way Meshal formulated his remarks on the ceasefire:

“We give six months to open real political horizons … we agreed on the national accord to establish a Palestinian state, with the June 4, 1967 borders,” he said, during talks in Cairo. “They have to seize this opportunity.”

It is vitally significant that Meshal used the precise phrase “establish a Palestinian state with June 4, 1967 borders.” None of this delusional thinking that Hamas will not settle for anything short of the entire territorial area of Palestine, including current-day Israel. There is an element of realism here that is not always found in the Boys from Damascus. Perhaps their Syrian overlords are whispering in their ear that they must moderate their wild-eyed rhetoric. Again, all this is good.

Israel and the Palestinians must go all the way. There is no halfway. I’ve heard the Israelis before say there would observe truces while reserving the right to pursue “ticking bombs.” Which is a recipe for a doomed ceasefire. So far, at least, Olmert has not said this. Which leaves me hopeful. But we must not stop at a truce. We must get down to a negotiating table and create an outline of a full settlement. We must. Anything less means an eventual retreat to death and destruction.

Israelis, Palestinians and Bush: do not let this opportunity slip through your hands.

I would say that Amir Peretz comes out of this smelling pretty good. It was he who initiated this ceasefire proposal within the Israeli government by calling Abbas and offering one. In a fit of pique, Olmert excoriated Peretz for contacting the Palestinian leader without permission. It appears he knew about the Peretz phone call almost as soon as it happened because he had Peretz’s office bugged (though Olmert’s people refused to use that particular term). But Olmert must’ve realized that the offer was too good to pass up even if Peretz was the one who secured it.

I’ve moved the hands of my Doomsday clock back from a minute to midnight to three minutes to midnight to reflect the great hope that this development brings.

Robert Rosenberg‘s Ariga.com report today contains this riveting item:

Islamic Jihad, which has been behind all the suicide bombings inside Israel since early 2005 — Hamas signed on to an Abbas-initiated ceasefire in 2004 — announced it was accepting the Prisoners’ Document, effectively beginning a ceasefire…

The document implicitly recognizes Israel and calls for a right of return…[which leaves] open the possibility that [it] would be limited to a Palestinian state that would be established in the 1967 borders. The document calls for armed resistance to the occupation to be limited to the occupied territories — and Islamic Jihad’s announcement apparently means it will cease firing Qassams into Israel: that, in any case, was the army’s interpretation, halting its artillery shelling of Gaza’s ‘Qassam launching zones,’ shelling that has been almost constant since it began months ago in response to the rocket attacks.

Jerusalem Post also runs this story.

If Rosenberg is right, then this is potentially big news. Islamic Jihad has been the most significant militant group maintaining a purely rejectionist stance toward Israel. It has conducted almost all the terror attacks since Hamas began its hudna. It would mean that essentially every Palestinian militant group has now endorsed the Prisoner’s Document (except Hamas and possibly the Popular Resistance Committees). And while Hamas as a group hasn’t endorsed the Document, its most prominent prisoner did collaborate in creating it and signed it. This causes no end of consternation among the Hamas rejectionists in Damascus and Gaza.

If the news is borne out, then it is good on several levels. Most imminently, it is good because both the Qassam attacks and Israel’s murderous counter barrages will end. Second, it is good because this puts the Hamas rejectionists even more on the defensive. Third, it gives Abbas some added support in his battle to get Hamas’ agreement to the plan. Fourth, it gives Ehud Olmert and the Israeli Nyetniks (‘nyet’ to Abbas and final status negotiations, ‘nyet’ to Hamas, etc.) one less argument to use against negotiating a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas. An Israel not under threat of rocket barrage is an Israel which may take more seriously Abbas’ pleas for Olmert to see him as a legitimate partner for peace. Fifth, IJ’s agreement to the plan forces the international community (including the U.S.) to realize that we are now coming to a decisive moment in the struggle for peace. If Israel’s worst enemy among the Palestinian militants is willing to honor a ceasefire (and let us hope that this is the case), the rest of the world must recognize that the tectonic plates of this conflict are shifting. Will the world take advantage of this to force those plates (i.e. the parties) together or will it stand by and let them continue to drift helplessly?

Gershon Baskin says “only Hamas can do it” [make peace] (photo: Justvision.org)

Gershon Baskin, co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information and a long-time expert on Palestinian affairs writes in the Jerusalem Post that the prevailing view among Palestinian, and even among Israeli analysts he speaks with is that Hamas will likely moderate its views regarding Israel:

Almost all of my Palestinian colleagues tell me that Hamas will change. They say that once Hamas has the burden of governing they will have to become more pragmatic. They speak of the process of change that they themselves went through.

And further, because of its former rejectionist positions that Hamas may be the only Palestinian party that can secure a real peace with Israel:

Facing the reality that Hamas is now in power in Palestine, it is important to accelerate their transformation from a radical pariah into a potential interlocutor. The Likud used to always claim that “only the Likud can do it” because the Likud represented the most hard-line positions and because it had no real opposition to their right. In the same way perhaps “only the Hamas can do it” and perhaps it is in the interest of Israel to sit across the table from Hamas leaders.

Baskin notes his conversation with a former PA minister confirms his conviction that Hamas will have to recognize Israel, if not immediately and explicitly, then certainly tacitly. And that such everyday interactions will lead to finding a path to peace:

A close Palestinian friend who was a PA minister and who spent 15 years in Israeli prisons before the first intifada knows all of the Hamas leaders personally. He met them all when he was in prison. He lives in Gaza and still has the opportunity to speak with them on a regular basis. He is 100% convinced that once they assume power Hamas will discover that they will have to deal with Israel.

Every single Palestinian ministry and minister has to deal with Israel. Palestinians are simply too dependent not to deal with the Israeli government and army.

Reality is simply much stronger than slogans – for both sides. I, too, think that the two sides will have to deal with each other; they simply will not have a choice.

It may take time for the Hamas to meet Israeli conditions for negotiations. Hamas will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state – I cannot say Fatah ever recognized Israel as a Jewish state. Fatah did recognize Israel as a state that is here to stay without recognizing the legitimacy of the state as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

I think that Hamas will be pressured by the Arab world to support the Arab League peace initiative which calls for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, in return for which Israel will be recognized by the entire Arab world, who would sign peace treaties with Israel.

Baskin presents what he calls “the optimistic assessment” of what could happen to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Hamas’ ‘watch:’

Most analysts – Israelis and Palestinians – say that Hamas is interested in entering into a long-term hudna…According to Israeli security experts, over the past year, with one exception, Hamas has kept to the tahadieh – the calm, and has not engaged in terrorism.

The optimistic assessment is that Hamas will enter into a long-term hudna (the Israeli condition of ending terrorism fulfilled), Hamas will support the Arab League peace initiative (granting conditional recognition to Israel), and the Hamas government will deal with Israel on a daily basis (basically working according to the Oslo agreements). Formally, Hamas will not fulfill the Israeli conditions, pragmatically they will.

If those conditions are realized, then the question becomes how does Israel respond? Actually, I feel convinced that Israel will not respond positively. Then the question becomes what do the U.S., the Quartet and the EU do to move Israel off the dime.